Robert Bosch Venture Capital leads USD3.75m series A round for Flybits

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Toronto-based Flybits has closed a USD3.75 million series A financing led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) and Trellis Capital Corporation with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Ryerson Futures.

The investment will advance the company's product development and international growth in the US and Europe.

Since spinning off from Ryerson University in 2012, Flybits has raised a total of USD4.05 million to date, including a seed round from MaRS Innovation. Flybits technology has been used in developing smarter cities, connected stadiums, smart corporate campuses, shopping malls, conference venues and fashion shows.

"Flybits is RBVC's first investment in Canada," says Luis Llovera, managing director of Robert Bosch LLC based in Palo Alto, California. "The company has demonstrated a unique and innovative approach in building foundational technology to deliver Contextual Mobility Services for both display-driven devices and for the emerging Internet of Things applications. Flybits' strong roots in tangible and high impact R&D, their ability to predict the required infrastructure for the industrial Internet and their global entrepreneurial ambitions were some of the reasons we were attracted to this company."

"Involving high-quality investors such as Bosch and Trellis demonstrates the potential in our unique approach to designing Intelligent Mobility Solutions that are intuitive and scalable," says Dr Hossein Rahnama, CEO and founder of Flybits. "In particular, having Bosch as a strategic investor means we leverage their global expertise in software automation, connected communities and sensor technologies as we support new and existing international customers, and scale and develop both our team and our products."

Flybits' goal is to build a platform that allows anyone to create context-aware mobility experiences without worrying about semantic analysis or context processing.